The invention relates generally to electrical cabinets adapted to store, or house, electrical components, and, more particularly to printed circuit boards used in data storage and transfer systems.
As is known in the art, electrical cabinets are used to store, or house, a variety electrical components such as printed circuit boards. The electrical cabinets allow the components within the cabinet to be interconnected and also allow the internal components to be connected to components external to the cabinets. The cabinets typically have an access door and a number of compartments, such as a card cage, i.e., a housing to store the various interconnected printed circuit boards. In addition, the individual components within the cabinet may be replaced or removed to a different location for repair.
Typically, some of the components are printed circuit boards arranged in a card cage, or housing, in an array of vertical or horizontal guide slots (i.e., a linear array of guide slots) provided between opposing sides of the cabinet. Each board is insertable into a corresponding pair of the opposing guide slots and is urged towards the rear of the cabinet to enable an electrical connector mounted to the rear edge of the board to engage, and thereby electrically connect to, a backplane. A backplane typically is a printed circuit board which contains a plurality of electrical connectors. The backplane commonly is referred to as a mother board. The other printed circuit boards discussed above, which connect to the mother board, commonly are referred to as daughter boards.
When an electrical cabinet is manufactured, a particular backplane may be installed in a housing designed for general use. However, the housing may not be able to allow the backplane to be quickly installed, easily registered into a specific position relative to the daughter boards that are subsequently installed, or easily secured within the housing.
In addition, card cages of electrical cabinets may not be able to accommodate backplanes having different thicknesses. Typically, electrical cabinets are used in systems that are custom tailored to the needs of the customer. Thus, the structure of a single cabinet may be employed in a system in which different combinations of components and different types of components may be used. These various components may have varying dimensions. Also, several vendors may supply similar components for a system design. For example, two different vendors may supply the backplanes for a single system. These different backplanes may have slightly different tolerances due to the differences in manufacturing standards of different vendors.
Also, existing card cages may secure printed circuit boards, especially backplanes, using hardware that concentrates a load in a small area. For example, a bolt and washer used to secure a printed circuit board has a concentrated load bearing surface and can cause the printed circuit board to, e.g., delaminate.